Community Tips Part 11

David Phelan - This is the best workflow tip for anyone using Melodyne (everybody!); I’ve never seen anyone else use it (I could be wrong :) )

Tuning Vocals:

1. Navigate While Staying in the Melodyne Window Without Looking At Screen:

2. Activate the preroll as 1 Bar (that length up to you, but 1 bar is a good starting point).

3. Activate playback follows insertion. With the Melodyne window open, play the track you wish to tune.

4. When you hear something wrong, hit spacebar, then hit it again. The track will play from one bar back previous to where you stopped.

5. If you need to go further back, hit space bar a few more times.

This way of getting around really helps you to listen as you don’t need to look at the screen. When not tuning in Melodyne, the space bar is the only key you need to press. So it’s easy to get used to. Try it and you’ll spend way less time tuning and get way more natural results, because you don’t have to look at the screen & those fallible blobs! This tip works great for all kinds of editing, but works especially well for Melodyne.

David Finnamore - Leverage the Cloud to hear how your mixes translate through different speaker systems. Make an appropriately-named folder in your cloud storage for holding test mixes. Bounce 256 kpbs MP3s straight into it. You can now listen to them instantly and easily on virtually any internet-connected device. If you use a logical, consistent naming/numbering system for your mixes, you can also rapidly compare different versions on each system. WAVs work, too, of course, but you have to wait a bit for them to download over most connections. If you have an iPhone/iPad/iPod and Apple TV, you can stream mixes through your home entertainment system right from the cloud app; it works using the Dropbox app, anyway, and should be OK with the others. Someone may be able to suggest an equivalent function for Android devices. iTunes can also stream to Apple TV if you have it installed on your Pro Tools computer. But I find it quicker and easier to do it through the Cloud than to copy the mix to an iTunes library and navigating menus on your TV.

Glenn Brown - This tip is about the overall noise floor on a session. If you use any plug-in that generates analog noise, this will allow you to turn off the dither in plug-ins such as Waves Linear EQ. In short, dithering inserts random low level noise to mask truncation errors. This dither “noise” and the simulated analog noise are at the same level. By turning off the dither in plug-ins that no longer need it, you will lower your noise floor. As for some of the analog plug-ins, watch the overall noise floor on the master buss. Back in the 90’s, on a SSL 6056 56-channel analog mix with twin Studers and EFX to a CD-R had a noise floor between 98dbfs to 85dbfs without noise reduction. I use this as my reference noise mark and the down stream engineers will love you for the added dynamic range for further processing.